NIGHTMARE OF MOTH FLAME.

          The Nightmare of Moth Flame was a mid-Eris eruption of elemental pairs (commonly classified as “the fire” and “the house”), which caused widespread devastation and violent rioting before being brought under control after six days.  The impact event was particularly unusual in that there was no apparent radiant, that is to say, no point in the sky or upon the terrestrial surface from which the conflagration appeared to originate.  Even less properly understood are primary accounts which report the fire survived the initial collision by passing through inhabitants of the house, and then almost a week later, exited the continent through them again.  Differing records either blame these persons for encouraging the catastrophe or credit them with organizing measures to contain it and provide relief for refugees. 

          When the conflagration spread, the population fled first to the open fields and unaffected areas and later to rural roads surrounding the house. Looters and arsonists were reported to have spread the flames by throwing torches or, acting in groups, to have hindered measures being made to halt or slow the progress of the flames.  No reliable evidence survives to allow an accurate estimate of the number of casualties caused by the event, however the fire was so destructive that archaeologists still use the clearly defined layer of ash deposited by the collision to date the strata below the continent.
          The celestial conflagration would come to be known as the Nightmare of Moth Flame for many common reasons.  As the house was the region perceived as darker than any other part of the society, it was widely believed that comets, asteroids, and meteors could be attracted to it out of a desire for cover or concealment, or conversely, that these objects used the house residents as safe reference points and fixed their  flight patterns according to their growth and movement.  A similar theory speculated the inhabitants of the house were born with or believed in an escape-route mechanism related to combustion and light (a form of “thermogenesis” or “comet magnetism”), and invited the impact event as an advantageous response to cultural crisis and upheaval.  
          Contemporary examination and analysis of multi-continental remains offers an alternative explanation.  Operating under a “total house” hypothesis, researchers now suggest that the collision represented a remnant of a circumterrestrial chain of events, one formed from the ejecta of the continents at their inception.  The consensus of their studies regard the rare-chemical, isotropic, and bulk composition of the charred strata as definitive evidence that the impact was the product of non-temporal command, a coordinated effort of eternal forces, and therefore unlikely to be avoided or assessed by any known surface, structure, or society.